Is LinkedIn Becoming The New Facebook?

We all know that feeling when we open our devices and see, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”

Over the last few years, LinkedIn has been described as a “sleeping giant” in comparison to the other mainstream social media channels for its effective recruitment capabilities, when looking for a new candidate, or growing your business network. However, since Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016, we’ve seen an influx of 100M users on the platform, reaching a current total of 500M users. The network is expanding and growing quickly, and users are communicating on the network in a new way; sharing more articles and subsequently generating higher engagement, making it a powerful marketing tools for brands.

Mundane updates are now a thing of the past! According to Buffer “36% of LinkedIn members now read interesting articles they find in their feed, an increase of 20 percent since 2014.” Far higher than current organic engagement rates on Facebook.

In addition to this, after high demand, LinkedIn introduced video to the platform in 2016 which is bringing users together and allowing others to share either experiences or views on a certain scenario. Buffer also stated that “Videos from the limited release are getting shared 20+ times more than any other content.”

If you’re flicking through the timeline, you’ll now start to see “based on your interests” paid advertisement more frequently across the network, this is more a less exactly the same to Facebook Remarketing!

It’s not just what you post, but even the interface (on desktop) are practically the same, and have similar icons located in the same places. Next time you visit LinkedIn on your desktop, compare to it your own personal Facebook timeline to see just how parallel they both are. This article directly compares both channels in further detail. https://www.diffen.com/difference/Facebook_vs_LinkedIn

But it’s not just the interface layout of the platform. Whilst scrolling through your timeline on LinkedIn, many of you might be thinking, hang on, this post is completely irrelevant to me and isn’t beneficial to me, nor my professional knowledge? Well that’s where you’re wrong, a meme or motivation post will always catch your immediate attention. What this has done is create a sense of fresh perspective across the entire spectrum which has opened up discussions which are not entirely work related, where professionals are now engaging with one another by finding middle ground using similar interests based on that particular post.

How do you see the future of LinkedIn shaping, and will it sway more towards a social platform more than a professional one?